Hiking safety

Hiking is a great form of exercise and can be a great outdoor event for friends and family. Recently, there have been many reports of hikers being lost or injured. Do you know what to do in a hiking emergency?

Hiking in forest

Hiking is generally not considered a dangerous activity. There are times, however, that you may find yourself a long way from "civilization" and an injury or something else could occur. In order to keep your hiking safe, the RCMP would like hikers to consider the following safety tips:

In any given year, Search and Rescue groups in BC respond to nearly 1000 incidents involving over 1300 missing (lost) or injured persons. Search and Rescue have 2500 unpaid professional volunteers, located in more than 80 BC communities available day and night. Together these men and women donate over 100,000 hours of their time on call-outs annually, and an astounding 95% of subjects were found or rescued within the first 24 hours of a volunteer SAR group being activated. This volunteer service offers tremendous value for citizens and visitors alike. The cost to replace this volunteer service in direct salary dollars alone would exceed $5,000,000 annually (excluding infrastructure and capital costs, which are estimated at over 50 million dollars).

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